Earlier this month, scholars, policymakers, human rights advocates, and business representatives convened at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva for a roundtable titled “Responsibility in the Anthropocene: Taking Stock of the UNGPs’ Role in Aligning Technology, Business, and Human Rights”. The roundtable evaluated whether the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) remain fit for addressing current and emerging challenges at the intersection of technology, corporate power, and human rights.
The event was co-hosted by the OHCHR B-Tech Project and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights and included participants from OHCHR, UN member states, civil society, the University of Cambridge, the University of Geneva, and Harvard’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics.
The Guiding Principles were endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 and have become a global reference framework for governments and businesses.
Professor Ella McPherson said: “Practitioners and policy-makers brought some stark examples to the table of how AI is impacting their work in humanitarian aid, conflict and human rights. In the face of these challenges, the spirit of the roundtable was collaborative and determined, and we concluded with a shared hope that some of the ongoing and new initiatives we discussed might embed human rights more centrally into AI futures.”
